


I still remember how you smiled and said, "Was that a dream or was it true?"

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Astraphobia, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Jyn is afraid of storms, Panic Attacks, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, because she nearly drowned in a flood caused by a storm, inspired by the manhattan transfer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 01:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11220402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Jyn hates the rain, because she fears floods and drowning.Fortunately she's not going to be suffering it for too long.





	I still remember how you smiled and said, "Was that a dream or was it true?"

**Author's Note:**

> Music to read with: [A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofg8vUDGWQI), this version by the Manhattan Transfer.

If she turned her face away from the windows, if she closed her eyes against the wildly swaying shadows of the thin curtains with their embroidered flowers and vines, if she pressed herself into her pillows and covered her ears, she could almost, almost ignore the storm that raged outside: there were forecasts of flash floods. There were already reports of people having to flee their houses because the water was flowing relentlessly into the basements and the ground-floor rooms. She didn’t want to imagine the traffic situation, couldn’t even begin to think about it. Who would have thought of a cloudburst hitting the city right on payday, with a major religious holiday coming up over the weekend?

Flash of light in her pillow-limited vision: the bouncing reflections of lightning, crazed lines streaking the sky, and she gritted her teeth and found herself falling straight into the schoolgirl habit of counting the seconds between the flash of the lightning and the roar of the thunder -- the length of time between those events would tell her how close or how far away the storm was, and in this case the storm was so close to being right on top of her as made no difference. A second and a half of interval: and she curled up even more desperately into the fetal position, trying to shut out the moan of the wind that sounded like voices raised in desperate pleas for mercy. Tried to shut out the relentless machine-gun fall of the rain, in her mind’s eye seeming to attack her windows in wind-driven nearly-horizontal lines.

And she hated the rain. Hated storms. Hated the idea of floodwaters rising and rising, consuming, completely destructive, complete and utter roaring foam-rippled death on the move. 

The memory rose up, unbidden, and she felt the tears begin to fall, and she was trapped in the phantom sensations or lack of them -- cold cold cold water rushing and rising and engulfing, from her ankles to her knees in one wanton surge, and then up to her hips, freezing rush, and she was a child again, scrawny and fearful, knocked straight off her feet, tipped right into the murk and she was so afraid she couldn’t scream, her high-pitched cries for help literally inundated by the flood -- she was going to drown, she was going to die, and no one was coming to help -- 

Even now, with years of trying to recover her memories and piece them together into some sort of coherent whole under her belt, she still couldn’t remember how she had been saved from the flood that had simply drowned the foundations of her childhood home, that had easily and capriciously collapsed the house that she had been born in, that had washed away everything that had been hers from the time she had come into the world. Warm clothes, clean blankets, the ancient crib that her father had claimed had been his own, the chair in which her mother had nursed her: she knew what these things looked like because they had been described to her, and those descriptions were all that was left. The crumbling descriptions of her childhood, consumed utterly by water -- water rushing along the ground, and water torrenting down from the sky.

She hated the rain. She hid from it. She could work from home; that was not the problem.

The problem was the smell of an oncoming storm, ions floating free from the earth and dissolving into the moisture clogging up the air. The problem was the first fall of rain, in this case utterly dispensing with any kind of soft drizzle, any kind of prelude. She knew that it was going to come bucketing down from the instant that she took a deep waterlogged breath of the very streets and earth exhaling. Only a moment of time to recoil away from that arresting smell, too familiar -- only a moment of time to close almost all of the windows. The first raindrops smacking into her hand, into her arm, and she’d pulled herself back in and all but dove for her bed. 

Try as she might, now, she couldn’t find any kind of shelter from the drone of the rain. From the shriek of the wind. 

From the memories of nearly dying.

Jyn closed her eyes and tried to reassure herself -- her parents had not exactly retired but they _had_ packed up their things and moved to a place of high temperatures, of dry winds. They would not be subject to these capricious wild storms. They would not need to relive their own traumas, their own torments.

And she couldn’t begrudge them that escape.

Still, she flailed out one hand from her makeshift cocoon of pillows, and made contact with her mobile phone, and thank goodness for scattered friends all over the world who had already left her messages: “Are you all right?” “Are you indoors?” “Put on the playlist I made for you.” “Deep breaths. And if all else fails, pour a couple of shots of something into your tea and drink it as fast as you can.” She almost, almost smiled at that last one. 

Was already steeling herself for the few steps to the counter on which she kept the tea things, the cabinet where her tiny stash of alcohol resided. Flannel blanket wrapped around her shoulders, fuzzy and warm and comfortingly heavy; soft socks and an oversized button-down shirt that was already coming apart at the yoke and the seams, her favorite thing to sleep in. Her feet on the rain-chilled floors, her eyes darting anxiously at every corner that was lit up by the blazing flashes of lightning -- and then thunder! The immense crash of it that seemed to shake the very walls that were keeping her safe! 

She cried out and dove for cover beneath the battered table that served her for desk and dining set. Felt the hot streak of tears down her cheeks. Soft frightened swear words falling from her lips, ineffectual defense against the storm as it continued to rage -- 

_Rattle. Scratch._

Jyn braced her arms over her head. She would have started praying now, if she could only pray, and instead all she could hear in the smaller spaces within her small rooms was the thin moan that wasn’t her voice, wasn’t her, whimpering and afraid, back to being a helpless drowning child again -- 

Vibrations coming. Approaching. Sounds like breathing, and a quiet exclamation of alarm, and -- was that sympathy? What was that voice, who was here, she thought, and her thoughts were scattering almost as soon as she could form them -- 

“The streets of town were paved with stars, it was such a romantic affair,” and that was music, that was a voice that she knew. A voice singing to her. “And as we kissed and said good-night -- ”

She opened her eyes. Looked up.

Couldn’t stop herself: “Oh, no -- ”

And the storm fell away from her though it still rumbled and crashed and came roaring down outside the windows: all she could see was drenched hair, and sleeves that were nearly transparent with how waterlogged they were. Beads of cold caught in the eyelashes, on the thin scruff of five-o’-clock shadow, at the corners of a mouth pinched thin with -- worry, she thought, he was worried for her, and he was worried enough that he was singing to her, when he’d claimed to have wrecked his voice a long time ago with too little sleep and too much hanging around friends who smoked --

Jyn reached out to the man who was on his knees, who was on the floor with her, and spoke the last line of the verse, rather than singing it: “A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square -- you’re here, but you -- you forgot your umbrella?”

“I gave it away,” he said. “Ran here.” And that was him through and through, that was just Cassian all over: to give away something that he himself desperately needed, because he felt that he could get by without -- but she was already throwing her blanket around his shoulders so he wouldn’t shiver himself apart after running through that storm that was still screeching outside.

“Six blocks from there to here,” she said, dismayed, and she could swallow the fear that chittered relentlessly in her mind because he was here. Because he needed her. “There” was the office that he was currently stationed out of, near the center of the city; “here” was half a dozen blocks uphill, and she imagined the gutters on the street below overflowing with rushing water that was moving rapidly down into the older streets.

She spared a moment to worry about the beautiful sturdy buildings that were much, much older than either of her parents -- but when Cassian sneezed she blinked, and let go of the idea of making some very boozy tea, in favor of drawing him close. Tucking him into her embrace, and tucking herself around him. His arms were already heavy like iron bands around her waist. Just a little more, and they would be clinging together from shoulders to ankles, nearly huddled in the tiny cube of space beneath the table.

His mouth was moving at her throat: “I ran to get here. I thought you might need me around.”

She kissed the top of his head in response.

He had needed her, she thought: not because he was afraid of the rain, not because there were terrifying memories in his mind that were triggered by the rain.

Maybe he ran back here because he needed someone to hold him: hold him and shelter him from the thoughts running wild in his mind. She could hear him, already, half-praying, half under his breath, different languages running together as he worried, as he fretted, as he tried to calm down, tried to get warm. Half a song in his entreaties, though she didn’t know whom he might have been petitioning.

Neither his friends nor hers knew that he would still sing: but for Jyn and Jyn alone. 

It wasn’t a secret, not precisely, she thought: it might just take the right moment, the right shot of something alcohol-fired, the right need.

But it was something for her and there was no one else he would do it for, no one else in the world who would know.

So she gathered her courage, gathered up her wits that had been shredded and scattered by her panic attacks, gathered up her love for him and offered it freely.

Sang the song he had been singing, all the while he whispered almost inaudibly against her skin.

“I may be right, I may be wrong, but I’m perfectly willing to swear that when you turned and smiled at me -- ”

“Jyn,” she heard him say, and she met his eyes. Ran her fingertips over his storm-damp cheek. Leaned in, and kissed him, and he wasn’t silent: he hummed, as sweetly yielding to her as she was grateful to him.

In his kisses she could forget about the drowning world outside.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompt Eighteen: "secret" at [@rebelcaptainprompts](https://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr. 
> 
> I am also on tumblr myself -- look me up [@ninemoons42](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


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